2-Day Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) Conference

Credit

Speaker

Richard Sears, PsyD, PhD, MBA, ABPP Related seminars and products

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Richard Sears, PsyD, PhD, MBA, ABPP, is a licensed psychologist in Cincinnati, Ohio, board certified in clinical psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP), runs a private psychology and consultation practice, and is the director of the Center for Clinical Mindfulness & Meditation. He has run hundreds of mindfulness groups and was lead clinician in the first brain scan study involving mindfulness with children and adolescents. He is also an adjunct professor in the University of Cincinnati psychology department, clinical research faculty at the UC Center for Integrative Health and Wellness, volunteer professor of psychiatry & behavioral neurosciences at the UC College of Medicine, and a former research/psychologist contractor with the Cincinnati VA Medical Center.

His most recent books include ACT with Anxiety (PESI); The ACT Flip Chart (PESI); Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Mindfulness Toolbox (PESI); Mindfulness: Living Through Challenges and Enriching Your Life in the Moment (Wiley-Blackwell); Building Competence in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Routledge); and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for PTSD (Wiley-Blackwell).

Dr. Sears is a sixth-degree black belt in Ninjutsu, and once served as a personal protection agent for the Dalai Lama with his teacher, Stephen K. Hayes. He has studied Eastern Wisdom for over 40 years, receiving ordination in three traditions, and transmission as a Zen master.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Richard Sears maintains a private practice and has employment relationships with the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, the University of Cincinnati for Integrative Health and Wellness, Alliance Integrative Medicine, and Wright State University School of Professional Psychology. He receives compensation as a consultant and royalties as a published author. Dr. Sears receives a speaking honorarium, recording, and book royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Richard Sears is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, a diplomate of the American board of Professional Psychology, and a fellow with the Academy of the American Board of Clinical Psychology. He is a peer reviewer for Mindfulness and a book reviewer for John Wiley & Sons, Inc, and Routledge. He is the director of Center for Clinical Mindfulness and Meditation.

Additional Info

Program Information

Please note: There will be a 70-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Lunch and break times will be announced by the speaker and at their discretion. A more detailed schedule is available upon request.

You will have access for 90 days after the program for review. For live CE credit, you must watch the live webcast in its entirety at its scheduled time and complete the CE quiz and evaluation within one week. Please note that this requirement may vary by credit type. Please see detailed credit information for specific requirements for each credit type.

Visit our FAQ page at https://www.pesicanada.ca/faq or contact us at https://www.pesicanada.ca/contact-us.

Objectives

1. Identify the principles of ACT and their practical applications in therapeutic settings.
2. Utilize systematic techniques to address control issues that impede client progress.
3. Implement strategies to help clients shift their focus to what matters most and maintain this focus amidst challenges.
4. Use metaphors and exercises to assist clients in expanding their sense of self beyond their struggles and identifying with their values.
5. Analyze how thoughts are conditioned with meaning and emotion.
6. Apply defusion techniques to help clients break free from negative thought patterns and improve psychological flexibility.
7. Utilize metaphorical and experiential techniques to teach clients how to change their relationship with unpleasant emotions.
8. Apply metaphors for exposure therapy and self-compassion to enhance clients’ ability to engage with and accept their emotions.
9. Choose mindfulness exercises to help clients remain present and effectively manage past regrets and future worries.
10. Implement actionable plans that are consistent with clients’ values and support committed action despite difficult thoughts and feelings.
11. Use ACT interventions for selected anxiety-related presentations, including GAD, panic, OCD, health anxiety, and PTSD symptoms.
12. Apply ACT strategies for trauma-related symptoms, including mindfulness, acceptance, defusion, values-based action, and exposure-consistent exercises.

Outline

A Deep Dive into Foundational ACT Principles

The Six Processes of Change

• Exercise: Setting intentions
• Toward process-focused treatment versus techniques
• The importance of context and function of behaviors
• Relational Frame Theory: How thoughts get their power
• What Goes Wrong: ACT Model of Psychopathology
  • Attachment to conceptualized self
  • Cognitive fusion
  • Experiential avoidance
  • Dominance of past & future
  • Lack of values clarity
  • Unworkable action
• The Hexaflex: Six universal processes of change
• Limitations & Risks

Becoming Psychologically Flexible

• Why psychological flexibility is critical to mental health
• Struggles as control attempts: Letting go of what is not working
• Systematically explore what does not work
• Increase psychological flexibility to do what matters
• Metaphor exercise: Creative helplessness
• Exercise: Bus metaphor

Clients Are Not Their Struggles: Expand the Sense of Self

• How clients over-identify with their problems
• Chessboard metaphor: Getting lost in the game
• Shift from self-as-content to self-as-context
• Metaphor exercise: Expand the sense of self to put struggles in context
• Exercise: Cosmic self meditation

Defusion: Break Free from The Battle with Thinking

• How internal representations develop in the human mind
• How thoughts are conditioned with meaning and emotion
• Reification of thoughts: How arguing with thoughts can make them worse
• Brain programming: Why clients cannot control or suppress thoughts long-term
• Metaphor exercise: Shift from being lost in the drama to aware of thoughts as they are

Acceptance: Break Free from the Battle with Unpleasant Feelings

• Diving into feelings to uncouple them from thoughts and misinterpretations
• Changing our relationship to unpleasant emotions
• Rope and finger trap metaphors to let go of struggle
• Metaphor exercise for exposure therapy
• Metaphor exercise for self-compassion
• Metaphor exercise for developing empathy for challenging clients

Just this Moment: Break free from Future Worries and Past Regrets

• Exercise: Three-minute mindfulness
• Eternity in this moment – the illusion of time
• Experiencing reality through the senses versus mental representation
• Explore challenges with curiosity – math problem versus sunset

Help Clients Set Their Life’s Course: Don’t Let Struggles “Drive the Bus”

• How values increase client motivation
• Helping clients explore the 10 value domains
• Use “the voice” of struggle to discern values
• Exercise to discern values: “and if you had that…”
• Breaking out of stuckness and moving toward a fulfilling life

Take Committed Action: Just Do It

• Build momentum toward what really matters
• Develop a realistic and workable action plan
• Teach clients to act with difficult thoughts and feelings
• The essentials of effective exposure therapy: time and situation

Putting ACT into Action

Anxiety

• From natural stress response to chronic reactivity 
• How anxiety about anxiety leads to a restricted life 
• Conceptualizing GAD, Panic, OCD, Health Anxiety, and PTSD from an ACT frame 
• How rumination becomes an avoidance strategy
• Quicksand and Crying Baby Metaphors
• Clean vs. Dirty Anxiety
• Internal Exposure

Trauma

• Nature of trauma & why clients get trapped
• Mindfulness Exercises-Exposure vs. Avoidance
• The Science of Memory Reconsolidation
• File Cabinet Exercise
• Tin Can Monster Exercise

Chronic Pain

• The problem of fighting pain
• Bringing compassion to discomfort
• Building a life worth living

Depression

• Assessing medical/substance/medication issues
• Behavioral activation: the essential treatment ingredient
• Mood dependent learning and memory: why arguing does no good
• Beck’s cognitive triad & suicidality
• Defusing from thoughts and taking action

Personality Disorders

• Why personality disorders are so different
• Increasing psychological flexibility
• Why understanding excessive and missing traits is critical to treatment
• Installing observing ego: making observations and connections
• Finding values and setting behavioral goals

Clinician Self-Care

• The stages of burnout             
  • Emotional exhaustion
  • Cynicism
  • Loss of personal efficacy or feelings of accomplishment
  • Psychological & physical problems
• Applying the six principles to oneself
  • Stepping back from thoughts about clients
  • Giving yourself permission to feel
  • Remembering your values

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Addiction Counselors
• Psychiatrists
• Psychotherapists
• Physicians
• Nurses
• Occupational Therapists
• Case Managers
• Other Helping Professionals